In a merger, acquisition, or other combination of two companies, all of the data and records from the combined companies must be merged into a single usable conglomeration. Often, this means migrating human resources and other records from the database(s) of one or more of the combined companies into a consolidated database, which may be either a new database, or the legacy database of one of the combined companies. Additional issues arise when human resources data is migrated. In addition to migrating the data, it is often necessary to facilitate staffing decisions regarding the pay-grade, vacation time, department, employment status, and other information about the employee after the combination.
In the past, migration of human resources data was accomplished with a great deal of complexity. First, export files were created from the human resources data of the company or companies whose data is to be migrated (the “migrating company” and/or the “migrating data”). Then the export files were manually translated according to the language and/or format of the destination company and/or database (the “target company” and/or the “target database”). For example, code was generated from scratch to bridge the differences between the migrating company's database and the target database. For each database and/or file format used by the migrating company, a different coded tool was generated from scratch to handle the migration. Once migration was completed, separate custom-coded agents were developed to generate from the target database files suitable for other departments and/or vendors of the target company including, for example, payroll, information systems, etc.